Thousands of police march for higher pay in Algeria

ALGIERS - Thousands of auxiliary police marched in Algiers Monday to demand pay raises, breaking through heavy security to reach parliament in a rare mass show of dissent in the tightly controlled country. The policemen, estimated by organisers to number around 20,000 and by reporters to be 10,000, braved a ban on demonstrations in the Algerian capital and pushed through several security cordons to reach the National Assembly. They were quickly surrounded by regular police dispatched to the scene of the protest. The men, many of them in uniform, demanded President Abdelaziz Bouteflika bring their salaries and conditions in line with those of other security services, chanting: "Bouteflika is the solution." Algeria's auxiliary police, a force numbering about 94,000 men, operate in the country's villages as part of a programme set up in 1994 when the government was battling I...